The Final Cut

The Final Cut Quotes

Set in a world with memory implants, Robin Williams plays a cutter, someone with the power of final edit over people's recorded histories. His latest assignment is one that puts him in danger.

Alan: [in the library] Is Suicide under Self-Help?
Alan Hakman: My job is to let people remember what they want to remember, Fletcher. It fulfilled a human need. I didn't invent the technology.
Jennifer: Perhaps... some things are best forgotten.
Alan: Perhaps.
Alan Hakman: [dying words] Will you look at that?
Alan: Then you know what it's like to be haunted. One memory... one single incident has made me who I am. It won't leave me be. The guilt tears me apart.
Alan: If I try it myself, I'll die. And I will try it myself.
Delila: Why are you here? You know it doesn't work between us.
Alan Hakman: I can change.
Delila: You can't change. You're a man of marble.
Alan Hakman: I still have some of your things. You want me to drop them off?
Delila: Keep them as souvenirs.
Alan Hakman: You wanna come by and pick them up?
Alan Hakman: I forgive people long after they can be punished for their sins.
Alan Hakman: The dead mean nothing to me, Mrs. Bannister. I took this job because I respect the living.
Alan: You wanna take a shot too? Everybody else has.
Alan: They say that friends help you move, but good friends help you move bodies, don't they?
Delila: There's no place for me with you. You haven't even made room for yourself. You have to separate yourself from that machine.
Legz, the Tattoo Artist: Now first we do the audio tattoo... and we wait a week. If you don't get a migraine and your system takes it... then we'll do the video tattoo.
Alan: Do I have to cover my whole face?
Legz, the Tattoo Artist: No. Those guys
[referring to the men in the lobby with large face tattoos]
Legz, the Tattoo Artist: ... they're just young and angry. You want it discrete.
Alan: Very.
Legz, the Tattoo Artist: Yeah.
Alan: Will this hurt?
Legz, the Tattoo Artist: Oh, yeah.
Alan: There will be nothing I won't know soon.
Alan Hakman: I need to speak to you alone.
Thelma: Michael, why don't you go down to the store and buy some cigarettes?
Michael: We got eight packs already.
Thelma: Well, bring them back then. We don't need so many.
Fletcher: It's a strange profession you have, isn't it, Alan? You take people's lives, make lies out of them.
Alan Hakman: It's been a long time, Fletcher.
Fletcher: Eight years.
Alan Hakman: Well, I don't have time to catch up right now.
Fletcher: How can you handle it, Alan? People sleeping and shitting... people stealing from each other... manipulating each other.. the obscenity.
Alan Hakman: I can't talk, I'm working.
Alan: He died of a coronary complication.
Simon: I was a complication, or didn't you get to that part yet?
Delila: These moments... they belong to me, Alan. The good and the bad. They're mine and his! Who are you to take them away from me?
Delila: What is it?
Alan Hakman: Some implants have defect. They can't see the difference between what the eye sees and what the mind sees.
Delila: Everytime I think I've had it with you, you show me something amazing.
[last lines]
Fletcher: It's for the greater good, Alan. Your life will mean something. I promise.
Thelma: Give the footage back to the widow. Let her deal with it.
Alan: I can't give it back. There's someone in that project I haven't seen for years.
Thelma: I hate it when that happens.
Delila: You fell in love with an image of me. Not the real me.
Alan Hakman: At first. Now I want you the way you really are.
Delila: I can't believe you after what you did.
Delila: A new cutting project? That, that's what you're talking to be about, Alan?
Alan: Well, more than that.
Delila: Alan, you've seen so much life and somehow you miss the point.
Simon: Let's do this.
Fletcher: No, no. Not now there's somebody up there. This has to be clean. No mess.
Simon: Clean, dirty. It's all the same to me.
Alan: Some of us still live by the code, Fletcher. We didn't walk away. We have what it takes.
Fletcher: And what does it take, Alan? Delusion? Obsession? Guilt? No, I don't have any of those... not as much as you do.
Fletcher: I heard you're not cutting any more.
Alan: I've had enough of other people's lives.
Delila: What about all the bits in between?
Alan: It's a miniature. Concise, symmetrical. That's the way the world looks to me... the way I see it.
Delila: How do you do this?
Alan: It's what I was meant to do.
Delila: You were meant to live your own life too.
Hasan: May I speak frankly with you, Alan?
Alan Hakman: Oh, Please.
Hasan: You're a real prick.
Title Card: The Cutter's Code: i. A cutter cannot sell or give away Zoe footage. ii. A cutter cannot have a Zoe implant. iii. A cutter cannot mix Zoe footage from different lives for a Rememory.
Hasan: This girl was a complete wreck - drinking, drugs, in and out of schools. Then she turns 21... and she finds out about her Zoe implant. Complete 180. She's born again. Her knowing that someone would one day watch... transforms her into this kind, gentle, loving person.
Michael: So what happened?
Hasan: She committed suicide. Took a dive off her balcony... 27 floors straight onto her head. The implant was instantly vapourized.
[first lines]
Young Louis - 9: Can I play?
Young Alan - 9: Do you have any marbles?
Young Louis - 9: Yep.
[reaches into his pocket]
Young Alan - 9: Okay.
Young Louis - 9: Thanks.
Young Alan - 9: You're welcome. So what's your name?
Young Louis - 9: Louis. Yours?
Young Alan - 9: Alan.
Young Louis - 9: You're not from around here, are you?
Young Alan - 9: No. I'm here with my parents for the day.
Delila: What do you have in this dump?
Alan Hakman: Not much.
Delila: Oh God! Alan! I'm right here in front of you. I see nothing has changed.
Delila: Guillotine. You're like a mortician... or a priest... or a taxidermist. All of them.
Isabel Bannister: Alan... it's not really Mr. Froggy's birthday. It's in a week.
Isabel Bannister: Alan? Are you gonna fix what my daddy can remember?
Alan: In a way, yes.
Isabel Bannister: Can you make him forget that I drew on his contract with crayon.
Alan: I will.
Isabel Bannister: And that I pulled Dottie's hard so hard that she cried. Will he forget that?
Alan: He'll forget.
Alan: But make sure you don't.
Delila: Your phonecall got me all worried. I saw the mirror, what happened?
Alan Hakman: I saw something.
Mrs. Monroe: Why are they tattooed like that?
Alan Hakman: I'm not sure.
Mrs. Monroe: It's so grotesque.

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